The GOP's greatest nightmare

Obamacare is lowering costs for health insurance much more than initially expected.

The most comprehensive study on Obamacare to date finds that Americans’ insurance premiums under the health law will be “lower than expected.” Many Americans will pay even less than the top-line rates after factoring in government subsidies for their health coverage, with some paying nothing at all for crucial medical coverage.

And, it offers actual health care coverage unlike the sort of low cost private insurance with caps on coverage so low it wouldn't cover the cost of treating a hang nail.

Thus it's no surprise Republicans are now trying to kill Obamacare by sabotaging the rollout via cockamamie investigation. With less than a month before open enrollment begins, Republicans issued a massive document demand to the agencies assigned to assist Americans wishing to enroll in health care exchanges.

Welcome to new world of fiscal conservatism where public health is an impediment to thwarting the President. Their timing could not be more obvious. The GOPers are targeting the several states with the most uninsured. Clearly the Republicans aim to prevent as many people as possible from signing up. Once again I wonder, why in hell would anyone vote these heartless cretins into office?

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Dueling charts - Updated

Well, this is an editorial so clearly it "was not intended to be a factual statement." For one thing this is not "Obama's Recovery," this is your future under Republican economics.

You might think the editors of the Investors Business Daily would have some interest in telling the whole story because rising tide lifts all ships or something like that. Oh wait, no they don't. The recovery has sucked for almost everyone except the very wealthy investor class, who want corporate friendly Republicans in power. So they won't mention the GOP's obsession with austerity and draconian cuts in government spending they extorted have greatly impeded recovery that benefits all the lower income classes.

Neither will the concern trolling editors at IBD mention how Big Banksters impede the growth of small business.

Neil Irwin highlights these charts from Hyun Song Shin’s comments at the monetary policy summit in Jackson Hole, WY, which provides an “interesting analysis that goes a long way toward explaining why growth has been so disappointing over the past four years.” The chart on the left shows that credit for the corporate business sector has picked up since the recession, while the chart on the right shows credit continuing to flatline for the non-corporate business sector.

Big Banksters got megatons of money on the cheap from the Fed for the express purpose of lending to non-corporate businesses. But they didn't, and still don't, lend to anyone but their corporate cronies because, profit. They like the recovery just the way it is but they're happy to keep the little people angry with half truths so they won't notice who's really screwing them.

Update: Explosive addition to this story by Greg Palast, who has the Bankster's secret end game memo that tells the story of how they invented and enshrined casino capitalism.

The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3 percent unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.

The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank. If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn’t be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.

The memo is authentic.

Fair warning. Do not read the nauseating details on a full stomach.

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Defeating the propaganda

Where I come from we call it lying, but as President Obama points out, it's perfectly clear the GOPers are trying to confuse the public about the benefits of Obamacare. Of course, they wouldn't have had so much success in doing so if our "liberal media" was willing to point out the inaccuracies (if they need a polite word) instead of simply acting as stenographers for the GOP's false claims. Our insider media is perfectly willing to analyze the political implications (and subsequent benefits of lying) but only Obama is willing to point out the obvious adverse consequences of the GOP's perfidy.

A lot of Republicans seem to believe that if they can gum up the works and make this law fail, they'll somehow be sticking it to me. But they'd just be sticking it to you.

Fortunately for America, albeit unfortunately for the Republican party, the GOP propaganda is not working like it used to. Leaping in where the media fears to tread, the people are calling the Republicans liars to their faces. Far cry from the summer of the angry mob in 2009. To paraphrase Charlie Pierce, at least this summer they're hollering at the right people. So there's that.

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Reid threatens to go nuclear

Yes I know we've heard this all before, but this time Harry Reid sounds serious on filibuster reform.

After a tense exchange on the floor with his Republican counterpart, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, planned to recommend to his fellow Democrats at a private lunch meeting that they should vote to take the exceptional step of barring the minority party from filibustering presidential appointees.

The step that Mr. Reid will endorse, which drew strong objections from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, would not affect filibusters of legislation or judicial nominees. But it would prevent Republicans from being able to require a supermajority of 60 votes for the confirmation of people the president appoints to cabinet level posts or other executive-branch positions.

Greg Sargent has the details on the nuclear trigger:

“We’re going to file cloture on a bunch of nominations, and those votes will occur next week when we schedule them,” Reid said, adding later that if no movement occurred on them, “we know what’s going to happen.”

According to a senior Senate Democratic aide, this means that Reid will file cloture on the following nominations today: Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; Obama’s picks to the National Labor Relations Board; and possibly Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary.

These are the appointments the GOPers most want to block in order to subvert the will of the majority. So a real test of the laughable "gentlemen's agreement" Reid and McConnell made at the beginning of the session. Remains to be seen if any of the old geezers have the guts to see it through. As the NYT reports, "Senators in both parties also say they fear it could irrevocably change the nature of the Senate."

One could argue we're long overdue for an irrevocable change in that moribund body.

Predictably, Reid's threat left McConnell spitting out his own threats of revenge on the floor, should the tables be turned in the future. (Warning HuffPo link.) As if that's not exactly what Republicans would do anyway if they ever regain the majority, regardless of whether Reid screws up the courage to make a bold move now while there's still time to pass some useful legislation.

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When Republicans refuse to govern

It's not exactly news to anyone who has been paying attention that Republicans have embraced full out obstruction of any meaningful legislation at all since the day Obama took office. What is news is that the Beltway BigMedia is finally acknowledging it. Today Jon Chait remarks on how obstruction has become the guiding principle of the GOP to the detriment of our country. At least for as long as that "blah" man holds the Oval Office.

A rational legislative strategy would consider the relative benefits of a law to maintaining the status quo, and weigh the possibilities of a better bill emerging over time. But tea-party logic simply regards the existence of compromise as disqualifying. The moral purity of opposition has become untethered from any political or policy objective, and appears to have sprouted into an actual freestanding principle.

It’s not such a strongly held principle that it would survive if and when Republicans regain control of government. Lowry, Kristol, and the entire tea party will surely forget their hatred of side deals when they are needed to pass the next tax cuts. But the hatred for legislating has gained a strong enough hold over the conservative mind as to render them unable to consider the merits of any bill at all.

Even more significant, yesterday, Chuck Todd practically accused Republicans of criminal negligence for sabotaging our entire process of governance. Worth reading Greg's excerpts in full. It's that astonishing to see language like this on First Read.

And this all raises the question: What’s the line between fighting for your ideology and ensuring that the government that pays your salaries actually works — or even attempts to work? At some point, governing has to take place, but when does that begin? We know what opponents will say in response to this: These are bad laws, and we have to do whatever it takes to stop them. But at what point does an election have a governing consequence?

Strong words coming from one of the Beltway's most realiable fluffers of establishment politics and biggest promoters of insidery access journalism.

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John Boehner's House of Dysfunction

Steve Benen catches the latest stats on the current session of Congress. Last year's 112th Congress is in grave danger of losing its status as the most unproductive session in modern history because:

Mark Murray noted yesterday that the current, 113th Congress is on track to be even worse.

When it comes to productivity, only 15 legislative items have become law under the current Congress. That's fewer than the 23 items that became law at this same point in the 112th Congress, which passed a historically low number of bills that were signed into law. These numbers might not be surprising given the legislative stalemates so far this year -- on the sequester, the farm bill, and student loans. Even the biggest legislative triumph so far of the 113th Congress, the Senate passing immigration reform by a 68-32 vote, appears to have hit a brick wall in the House of Representatives for now.

They have a majority. They should be able to pass bills but Republicans can't even agree among themselves anymore. The only thing they can accomplish as a united caucus are "message votes" to soothe the rubes back home. They believe that will be enough to keep them in office so they don't need no stinkin' governance to screw up their reelection campaigns.

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Mitch McConnell threatens Harry Reid

In a facedown between the two old geezers who both have held on to their seats of power for far too long, Mitch McConnell warns Harry Reid about the consequences of shutting down the GOP's obstruction function.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday starkly warned Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) not to eliminate the filibuster on presidential nominations, threatening to end the 60-vote threshold for everything, including bills, if he becomes the majority leader.

“There not a doubt in my mind that if the majority breaks the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate with regard to nominations, the next majority will do it for everything,” McConnell said on the floor.

As if that's not exactly what McConnell would do on the very first day if the electorate is stupid enough to put these crackpot cretins back into the majority. Harry's only and obvious response should be, screw that noise you pompous windbag. Harry should do exactly that to the GOPers now, so at least the Senate can pass some useful policy before the electorate loses it mind again.

Sadly, I doubt Harry Reid, Man of Infinite Indecision, has the balls to do it.

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Obamacare must die

For the GOP's hardcore crackpot caucus there is only one overriding mission. They must kill Obamacare by any means possible and they don't care who gets hurt in the process. So this presents an interesting test for the more practical establishment GOPers.

It's inevitable a law as complicated as the ACA is going to need some tweaking. Only as the provisions go into effect will the unintended consequences resulting from the massive partisan horse trading be revealed. One such problem is the law leaves self-insured religious organizations in the lurch.

Months of outreach to Republican Senate offices by religious leaders have yielded no official GOP support to an appeal from a broad coalition of religious denominations to ensure that church-sponsored health plans can participate in the ACA’s health insurance exchanges. Worse yet, from a partisan Republican point of view, two Democratic senators, Mark Pryor and Chris Coons, were the first responders to this call, introducing legislation late last week. Pryor is widely viewed as the GOP’s number one senatorial target in 2014.

Without the requested “fix,” as many as one million clergy members and church employees now enrolled in church-sponsored health plans could soon face the choice of leaving these plans (designed to meet their unique needs, such as the frequent reassignment of clergy across state lines) or losing access to the tax subsidies provided by the ACA to help lower-to-middle income Americans purchase insurance.

I'd guess this will affect red state fundie churches even more than more liberal denominations. So the question is what are the Republicans going to do? Clearly the crackpot cons, considering they rejected a rather brilliant ploy to sabotage Obamacare simply because it would look like they were helping it succeed aren't going to agree to an actual fix. I imagine they believe they can raise some rage among the conservative congregations by allowing the inadvertent exclusion to stand.

Maybe they're right. It's not like their voters, who largely rely on Fox News, are going to be told Democrats are trying to fix the problem. How this plays out will depend largely on whether the rest of BigMedia focuses on the facts or goes for the click-bait and simply reports the controversy without the context.

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Obama fights back at last

It's about damn time our President accepted his political opponents are irredeemable crackpots who care only about their own political power and dropped the nice guy routine. You can't meet people halfway when their definition of compromise is they get everything they want and you get to take all the blame for their inhumane agenda. But it is interesting to see how our "liberal" media plays the change. David Graham at The Atlantic lays it out under the headline, Forget the Charm, Keep the Offensive: Obama's Aggressive New Strategy.

Get that? Republicans can say any damn offensive thing they please, vandalize our system of government, advance the most obvious lies about the President's policy proposals, sabotage our economy, deliberately ignore the most pressing problems facing the nation and relentlessly attempt to destroy every vestige of humane government policy while wasting millions of our money on their political chicanery and the media merely transcribes it without any colorful adjectives that might even faintly suggest they're destroying America as we know it. But now that the President has finally decided to fight them on their own damn terms, he's aggressive. On the offensive. You can almost hear the word uppity just dying to get out.

But leaving the media's long entrenched GOPcentric mindset aside, I for one welcome the newly combative Obama. He's the President dammit. He was elected by a landslide by present day standards and this is what people stood in eight hour long lines for. A real fight. Republicans are out of control. They need to called out. Let them whine. It only exposes their weakness and their perfidy.

[Big thanks to Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction (Twitter: @mjwstickings) for kindly linking in.]

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I feel the bridge fall under my feet

Austerity maniacs are literally going to kill us. When you have a major political party which is effectively one half (or sometimes more) of our government refusing to spend a red hot penny on the public commons while they bleed our national treasury to wantonly pass out tax breaks to the obscenely wealthy, this is what you get.


[RJ Matson cartoon]

This is not a joke. Cutting government funding for infrastructure projects verges on criminal negligence. Our bridges are falling down and it will only get worse. [via]

...The 607,380 bridges in the U.S. are 42 years old on average, and 1-in-9 are rated “structurally deficient,” according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which advocates more spending on such structures.

The deficit is shrinking. We can borrow our own money for practically nothing. Repairing our critical infrastructure would create jobs, improve the economy and reduce the deficit with increased revenues making the cuts unnecessary. The Republicans ongoing refusal to allow these spending bills to even get to the floor for a vote redefines "death by a thousand cuts" as pure homicide. When we weigh this on the "stupid or evil" scale, the obvious answer is pure evil.

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Crumbling infrastructure is our national shame

Miraculously no one was killed when that bridge went down in Washington state this week. It's unlikely we'll be so lucky the next time and there will be a next time because we can't get the funding out of DC. The chart shows our national neglect of our critical infrastructure.



You might have thought the horrifying bridge collapse on I-35W in Minneapolis in 2007 would have been a wake up call, but no. At a time when one in nine of our bridges are deficient in some way, Republicans continue to block all infrastructure spending simply because they see it as win for Obama and they're still trying to squash our economy for their own politcal gain in the next election.

It's stupid. Hell it's evil. We could put people to work rebuilding our roads and bridges and as Atrios said, replace aging waterlines in our cities. Those are so ancient, they're busting open all over America.

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Obamacare, it's lowering costs

There was some article going around a week or so ago where one of the big health insurers was claiming rates would rise by something like 384% because of Obamacare. Which unsurprisingly turns out to be pure bullcrap. The news out of California, our biggest state with some 7.1 million uninsured residents, is rates are going to be significantly lower than even neutral observers had predicted.

I couldn't access the original New Republic piece. Apparently you need to be a subscriber now to read it, but Ed Kilgore has a good summary:

Based on the premiums that insurers have submitted for final regulatory approval, the majority of Californians buying coverage on the state’s new insurance exchange will be paying less—in many cases, far less—than they would pay for equivalent coverage today. And while a minority will still end up writing bigger premium checks than they do now, even they won’t be paying outrageous amounts. Meanwhile, all of these consumers will have access to the kind of comprehensive benefits that are frequently unavailable today, at any price, because of the way insurers try to avoid the old and the sick.

Ed has the numbers and a policy that was expected to cost $450 a month will actually be $300 and that's before the government subsidies kick in. For healthy 20 years old, the subsidies will completely cover a bare bones policy and a single individual making under $45k a year, estimated to be about 12% of the population, will get generous subsidies as well finally making health care affordable for just about everybody. And this is even with major insurers opting out of the exchanges.

And it's not just in California. Obamacare is lowering rates in other states too because, competition.

We've see this happen in other states. Earlier this month, rate proposals released by insurance companies in Washington state showed some people's premiums would actually go down. Premera Blue Cross had estimated that premiums would rise about 50 percent to 70 percent. When Oregon released proposed health care premiums online in May, two insurers requested the chance to adjust their rates — to make them lower. Why is this happening? "The premiums and participation in California, Oregon, Washington and other states show that insurers want to compete for the new enrollees in this market," the Kaiser Family Foundation's Gary Claxton told The New Republic. The glories of the free market.

This is why the GOPers keep trying to repeal it. Their greatest fear is it will succeed and prove the reformers, and Obama, were right.

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Mitch McConnell spins the scandals

Gotta give him some credit for wringing the most value out of pseudoscandal. Taking to the WaPo op-ed page, Mitch McConnell sees an opportunity to quash big money donor disclosure:

[R]ecent efforts to revive the so-called Disclose Act suggest that these tactics are alive and well in Washington. This bill, which would force grass-roots groups to make their member and donor lists public, may seem benign to some. But as a longtime defender of the First Amendment, I have always seen it for what it is: a backdoor effort to discourage those who disagree with the Obama administration from participating in the political process. [...]

Oddly, some on the left are now arguing that the IRS scandal is reason to revive the Disclose Act. But if this scandal has taught us anything, it is that Washington's ability to target individuals and groups is already too expansive.

You will recall the odious intimidation McConnell is speaking of here merely requires deep pocket donors who sponsor political attack ads to be identified so the public can judge the motivation of the groups flinging the dirt to muddy the discourse. It doesn't kick in until the donation reaches $10,000 or more.

Of course the majority of these groups are backing Republican candidates and causes and are financed mainly by a handful of very wealthy Big Business conservatives but I'm sure that has nothing to do with Mr. McConnell's great concern that millionaires and billionaires might be terrorized on the streets by the hoi polloi if the voters find out who's sponsoring the half-truths and outright lies on their TV.

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Ted Cruz don't trust nobody but himself

You'll recall the House GOP passed a ridiculous budget based on Paul Ryan's roadmap to ruin back in March knowing full well it had zero chance of survival. Boehner thought he was being very clever with this pass the buck manuver. The GOPers immediately launched a mass tirade demanding Democrats pass their own damn budget in the Senate. Much to everyone's surprise, the Democrats did just that two months ago. According to normal process, the two budgets would go to a Senate/House conference committee shortly thereafter and a single compromise bill would emerge.

But there is no normal procedure now that the crackpot cons have taken even their own party hostage. Now comes the emerging leader of the lunatics, Ted Cruz who vows to block any budget conference negotiations unless his demand to "take a debt limit increase off the table" is met. In other words he wants to guarantee a replay of the same insane kabuki that almost took our economy down before. And that's much more important than passing a budget, which the GOP has been caterwauling about forever.

Cruz clearly has his eye on 2016 and he's more than willing to trash his own party, saying he doesn't trust big spending establishment Republicans either, in order to polish his bonafides with the crackpot rubes and establish himself as the new "Maverick" of the GOP. This is so "call in the white coats" insane that even the old Maverick Gumpy Gramps McCain is calling Cruz crazy. [video at the link]

Of course, no Republican is going to mention the deficit is actually shrinking. In fact it's shrinking faster than even the most optimistic estimates. But why should they be the first? Not like the media is out there telling the people at home about it either. They're too busy inventing scandals to drive their own damn traffic.

[Big thanks to Batocchio of Vagabond Scholar who is sitting in at Mike's Blog Roundup for the link.]

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Give 'em heck Harry

Well here we go again. Harry Reid is kinda, sorta, thinking hard about cracking down on GOP obstruction.

“I’m not going to do anything now, precipitously,” he said. “But I’m looking at this very closely…. We’re going to fill that job. Cordray is there now. He’s going to get a vote.”

Corday you'll recall is the long being held in limbo nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You'll also remember the GOPers are refusing to allow a vote unless the Dems agree to render the agency completely toothless, unable to enforce any actual consumer protection against predatory banksters.

Harry claims he's going to force a vote next week. Willing to bet it won't go well. [photo via The Moderate Voice]

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Eric Holder schools the bed wetters

I can't be the only one who finds it darkly amusing that the same gun hoarders who are preparing to engage in hand to hand combat with the gummit agents of tyranny piss their pants at the thought of closing Gitmo and giving those "dangerous" terrarists due process within the US of A's judicial system. As AG Holder mansplains to the would be warriors of freedom, we can do this.

The attorney general told graduates that federal courts are capable of handling terrorism cases, accusing critics of "ignoring reality."

"Let me be clear: those who claim that our federal courts are incapable of handling terrorism cases are not registering a dissenting opinion," he said. "They are simply wrong."

"Hundreds are properly, safely and securely held in our federal prisons, not Guantanamo, today. Not one has ever escaped custody. No judicial district has suffered a retaliatory attack of any kind," he said. "I defy anyone, on the merits, to challenge these assertions."

To which Republicans will answer: ZOMG! Obama wants to bring those Mooslim terrorists onto US soil and let them live right next door. The insider media will gravely report this development in the "controversy." There will be much polling to measure the daily public concern. Whereupon the very important pundits will predict what this all means for the President's agenda (almost always very bad) and give him earnest advice on to fix it.

What our mighty gatekeepers of BigMedia won't tell you is Eric Holder is absolutely right. We've had terrorists safely imprisoned on US soil for decades. All of whom were convicted under our regular judicial system. Fear of Gitmo prisoners is one of the lamest rightwing freakouts, ever.

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GOP blocks environmental protection

We continue to see the fruits of Harry Reid's handshake agreement with Mitch McConnell that derailed filibuster reform. Today Senate GOPers prevented a vote on a new EPA chief by refusing to show up, thus denying the committee a quorum:

Today, the eight Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee will not attend the nomination vote of Gina McCarthy to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On April 25, 2013 the Committee Republicans asked Chairman Barbara Boxer to postpone the nomination vote because they had not received answers to their questions.

They blocked the vote essentially over only five unanswered queries, after the nominee Gina McCarthy, had already answered over 1,000 questions. Moreover McCarthy has been head of the Clean Air division for several years and had been easily confirmed to that position in 2009.

She's highly qualified for the job, had in saner times been lauded by Republicans for her work and has the support of the business and science community. Apparently the real problem is she believes in climate disruption or refuses to buy into climate change denialism or something. And besides, the GOP base hates the EPA, hates science and this grotesque grandstanding will piss off liberals.

The rubes love that crap, so no-brainer for the GOPers. Or more like the brainless Republicans still rule our world thanks to Harry Reid's apparently endless supply of patience.

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Same old song and dance on Capitol Hill

The calendar is about to turn on the all new and unimproved GOP debt limit kabuki:

The federal debt limit is set to kick back into effect next weekend after a three-month hiatus, marking the start of a political game of chicken likely to culminate in the fall, when Congress will have to give President Obama a higher limit or risk a federal default.

The GOP's problem is the budget deficit is disappearing on its own. In fact, we're running a bit of a surplus and despite their best efforts at sabotage, the economy is still slowly improving. Government won't run out of money till the fall at the earliest, so the GOPers are left without a hostage to take. Furthermore, GOP leadership isn't keen on threatening default anymore after the beating they took at the end of last year in the polls when they tried to use that trick again.

This is not going according to plan and they don't have a back-up strategy. So after repeatedly demanding the Senate Dems produce a budget, which they did at an astonishing pace, suddenly the GOP doesn't want to talk about budgets anymore.

"I think there's a better atmosphere for a solution than there's been in the past, but I'm a little worried about people here in the Senate having fiscal fatigue. There isn't any sense of urgency right now," said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), one of three senators who joined Obama on Monday for a round of golf.

Got that. They've been wailing for years that this is the biggest crisis in the history of mankind, but suddenly they don't want to think about that today. In fact, they want to just forget the whole thing.

With the House and Senate both having passed budget resolutions, the next step in the process should be a conference committee, which Republican leaders said they wanted. Recently, however, they changed their mind and now refuse to allow the process to proceed.

The problem as usual is the crackpot caucus. If it's not going to piss off the damn librul Dimmocrats, then they don't want to know about nothing.

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Congresswoman Colbert from South Carolina

Yes I know I keep breaking my ignore the damnable polls rule, but the latest results showing Elizabeth Colbert Busch leading Mark Sanford by 9 points evokes visions of a liberal Democratic Congresscreature from South Carolina in my head. There's something I find deliciously weird and amusing about that.

Sure it's early and anything could change, but the other breakout numbers here that are worth noticing are these:

Although Sanford's unpopularity is clearly the main reason Democrats have a chance to win in this district, it's interesting to note that there is some backlash against Republicans over last week's vote on background checks. 86% of voters in the district say they support them to only 12% opposed, and 45% of voters say the GOP's opposition to them makes it less likely they'll support the party in the next election compared to only 21% who consider it a positive. That anger over the gun vote comes despite Barack Obama having only a 41% approval rating in the district with 51% of voters disapproving of him.

When they've lost the gun loving deluded rubes over gun safety reform, maybe that pathetic display of general cowardice and GOP obstruction on background checks will turn out to be the seminal moment that broke the Republicans' stranglehold on the House.

[Big thanks for the kind link at Mike's Blog Roundup and if you're not reading John Perr's other blog, well, you're missing some of the smartest analysis on the internets.]

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It's only just begun

Our broken Senate managed to prevent any reform of gun safety regulations yesterday. In a way it's almost a good thing because there were more amendments than just the watered down expansion of background checks that failed to break the perpetual filibuster requirement of 60 votes. In fact, the GOP's Cornyn amendment to further weaken interstate gun safety laws got more votes than Manchin-Toomey, though it also failed to reach the magic number.

While many were angered and disappointed by this complete failure of good governance, few have more reason to be angry than Gabby Giffords whose op-ed ran in the NYT last night. A powerful piece but these passages get to the heart of her remarks:

Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on. [...]

They looked at these most benign and practical of solutions, offered by moderates from each party, and then they looked over their shoulder at the powerful, shadowy gun lobby — and brought shame on themselves and our government itself by choosing to do nothing.

They will try to hide their decision behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you — but their decision was based on a misplaced sense of self-interest. I say misplaced, because to preserve their dignity and their legacy, they should have heeded the voices of their constituents. They should have honored the legacy of the thousands of victims of gun violence and their families, who have begged for action, not because it would bring their loved ones back, but so that others might be spared their agony.

As Gabby and the parents of the Newtown dead and so many others have vowed, this is not over. If anything this blazing display of political cowardice has only hardened the determination to change the status quo. And as Gabby said in the op-ed, if we can't reform the laws with this Congress, then we'll change the Congress members. In the end, anger may bring more change than hope ever could.

Meanwhile, while the vote was going on, many victims of gun violence were in the gallery. One of them was Patricia Maisch who shouted, “Shame on you!”

You may remember her from when Gabby Giffords was shot on that horrible day in 2011. "Maisch was hailed as a hero for disarming Tucson shooter Jared Loughner by preventing him from reloading a fresh magazine." As she was leaving the gallery, she was detained by security. They held her for two hours, which is "approximately 115 minutes longer than a background check at a federal gun dealer," in order to run a criminal background check because she dared to briefly disrupt the proceedings -- with three words. The irony is lost on no one.

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